I’ve talked about balance a lot on this blog, I think. It’s something I’m thinking a lot about. Through the counselling I’m getting through my uni, it’s becoming clear that, as a person, I tend to be very all or nothing. I either throw everything I have into a project, or forego it entirely. Either someone is everything to me, or I pay them no mind. Needless to say, I’ve come to see that this isn’t healthy. Hence the obsession with balance.

Another thing I’m thinking a lot about is the difference between Entrepreneur and Freelancer. In this article by Seth Godin, he points out the problem of freelancing being that one’s time and effort does not scale. The realisation that I have finite resources as a person is a rather annoyingly obvious one, but it was given me a lot of peace this week. I am definitely guilty of feeling like I always could be doing more, and in trying to reach that impossible standard of myself, I fall into the pattern of burning out I’ve alluded to in previous blogs. Which is why looking at this past week on my spreadsheet is very satisfying to me:

I’m happy with this because I’ve been writing everyday. Rather than doing my usual thing of 0 poems one day, then 5 the next, I’ve managed to balance things out a bit, and though I didn’t hit the 25 poems I wanted to hit, I’m nonetheless very happy with this week writing wise.

Realising that my resources, time and energy are limited means having to make difficult choices between what tasks and projects I can work on day to day. This #ThousandPoemYear challenge quite naturally rises to the top as a public facing project, but my challenge for myself moving forward is setting up systems that allow me to stay on top of all of my various projects, while respecting the finite nature of my time.

I’m doing a lot of thinking around Poetry Is Dead Good at the minute, where it’s going and what needs to change, and where I sit in all of that.

In terms of allowing more vulnerability into my poems, nothing has really happened on that just yet. But I’m looking at ways I can enforce a ritual switching up of my writing practise. How can I put myself into positions where I am not reaching for the same themes and devices? More on this as it develops.

In this next week, I’m aiming for 30 poems, to get myself back on track with this month’s goal of 100.